L’étude “Morphometry of Middle Bronze Age palstaves. Part II – Spatial distribution of shapes in two typological groups, implications for production and exportation” par F. Monna, A. Jebrane, M. Gabillot, R. Laffont, M. Specht, B. Bohard, E. Camizuli, C. Petit, C. Chateau, P. Alibert, vient d’être publiée dans la revue Journal of Archaeological Science, 2013, 40, 507-516, pdf. Il s’agit d’un travail pluridisciplinaire impliquant archéologues, morphométriciens, statisticiens, et géographes. Sur la base de leur forme, nous tentons d’appréhender les modalités de production des haches à talon, ainsi que leurs échanges.
Abstract: For archaeologists, metallic artifacts are key materials to assess Middle Bronze Age production areas and cultural exchanges. Here, a set of 629 bronze palstaves excavated in northern France, belonging to Breton and Norman typological groups, was treated by (open) outline-based morphometrics with orthogonal polynomial regression. Using robust statistics developed for outlier detection, these Norman and Breton palstave outlines can be divided into two groups: those for which the shape fluctuates close to the standard shape, called ”congruent” axes, and those which are far enough from this standard to be considered as “non-congruent”, although they possess most of the features of the typological group. Read more
